When you run a law firm, it is important that you are able to get the word out about your services in a manner that is both effective and appealing. This is true of just about any business, but honestly, it’s particularly true if the business you are in has stiff competition. How are you supposed to get people to hold you in higher regard than a competing law firm? That’s why it is important to consider the major problems that lawyers will face when trying to promote their law firms.
Problems lawyers face in law firm promotion efforts
In truth, the key to making a successful marketing campaign is that you either need a firm grasp on the methods of promotion or you need someone on your side that does. If you or someone on your team does not have a solid grasp on the process, the marketing can very easily fall through.
Marketing Allocation
One of the biggest problems lawyers face is allocation in marketing, which is a common misstep in marketing in general. Whether it is an issue of not enough time allocated or not enough money allocated, either one being lacking can be a significant problem.
On the other hand, sometimes a lawyer will put TOO much time and money into their marketing campaigns. The issue is that there can be some pretty significant diminishing returns. No matter how much money you put into a marketing campaign, the campaign may still be a dud if it is failing in other areas.
For example, if the marketing campaign is of low quality or if it does not properly reach its target audience, that amount of money simply will not do you any good. Of course, spending too little money will mean that reaching your target audience or achieving a high level of quality becomes that much more difficult to do. You also need to have the marketing funds to properly figure out who you are marketing to. If you do not know, you may as well be taking a complete shot in the dark at that point.
‘Quality issues’ is a bit of a nebulous problem; after all, there are multiple reasons why a campaign can be of bad quality. Some marketing campaigns may have a weak message, something that doesn’t inspire confidence in your ability as a law firm, of course they are not going to be interested in paying you for your services. Ambiguity and vague messaging, beyond being unhelpful in general for a marketing campaign, it also reflects poorly on your ability to do your job. After all, if you cannot be clear enough to compel a customer to use your services, how good will you be at compelling a judge or a jury to accept your argument over your opponent’s?
Industry Experience
Another problem is when a lawyer thinks that they can just prop themselves up on their industry experience and their presence in the industry. It can certainly help, but unless you are incredibly lucky, you are not going to be achieving success from just that. At the very least, it won’t be as much as you could achieve. Furthermore, that industry experience and presence is not going to reach the people who you most need to win over: people who require the services of your law firm. They are not likely to be in the same audience of people paying attention to the industry; rather, they are people who need you to get them out of a jam, and they probably don’t think about law firms other than what they can do for them. If you aren’t marketing directly to them, someone else is.
All in all, the last thing you want to do is move on from the marketing campaign, successful or otherwise, without doing an analysis of why it succeeded or failed. “It succeeded” or “it failed” means very little, but “it succeeded because…” is so much more valuable to determine how you proceed with your marketing campaigns in the future. It’s also good to have more than just one marketing campaign under your belt for such a determination, as it helps determine whether there is a commonality in the failures and successes of your marketing campaigns.
For instance, if you have two failures and one success, and the failures have a different marketing method and/or a different target audience, that may tell you that you should focus on what the successful marketing campaign did. However, even then, it’s important to figure out whether the successful campaign was just a fluke or not. Gathering data on each and every marketing campaign you conduct will do a world of good for your future work and success, and every failure you have is a helpful teaching tool. Website design is also a big issue, as a poor website design will turn off many. If the website design is unwieldy to navigate, they may decide to not bother due to frustration.
There are so many small steps that need to be accounted for as part of the process in order for the marketing campaign to work well.
